Indigenous Understandings: Fusing Landscape and Skyscape

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roslyn M Frank
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
North America ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Daily Basis ◽  
Relational Ontology ◽  
The Past ◽  
Form Part ◽  
Night Sky ◽  
The Way

The talk examines the relational ontology of the Native American Lenape Delaware people who form part of the larger Algonquian-speaking group of North America. It is sometimes said that in the past as people contemplated the night sky, they ended up telling stories that were meant to explain what they saw in the sky above. Certainly, there is ample proof for the existence such astral tales when viewed cross-culturally. What I discuss, however, is the way in which what the Lenape people saw and experienced on earth was projected onto the stars above along with the associated cosmovision and belief system they embraced. Instead of passive sky-watching, they were fusing together landscape and skyscape. In the case of the Lenape cosmovision discussed here I will show that it is intimately linked to the tenets of bear ceremonialism. It was a remarkable belief system that managed to weave together landscape and skyscape: what was happening on earth and experienced on a daily basis was exteriorized, given expression and importance by projecting aspects of this rich earthly belief system onto the massive sky screen above.

Reconstructing the Past

2020 ◽  
pp. 94-122
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Weiss ◽  
James W. Springer
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Population Size ◽  
The Past ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Native American Tribes ◽  
Answering Questions

Weiss and Springer summarize the bioarchaeological research that has challenged previously held stereotypes of Native Americans, answering questions about population size in North America prior to Columbus’s arrival; social structure of pre-contact Native Americans; violence rates in Native American tribes both before and after Columbus’s arrival; Native Americans health and diseases, such as tuberculosis and syphilis, before and after contact with Europeans; Native American diet throughout time; and Native Americans’ relationship with their environment.

scholarly journals Stolen Spirits

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kallie Nicole Hunchman
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
North America ◽  
Scientific Communities ◽  
Western Literature ◽  
Stephen King ◽  
Native Communities ◽  
Average Consumer ◽  
American Mythology ◽  
The Way

The windigo is a Native American spirit belonging to the Algonquian tribes of North America and Canada. Although well-documented in Western literature, the windigo spirit of stories like Pet Sematary by Stephen King and “The Wendigo” by Algernon Blackwood are stripped of their original context and are mere stereotypes of the cultures they originate from. By looking at the depictions of windigo in these specific Western stories and in Native American beliefs, it is possible to see how stripping spirits of their original contexts is harmful to Native communities. Western appropriation has long-lasting effects on the perceptions of Native American cultures by the average consumer and even scientific communities. In this paper, I document the depictions of windigo in Native American mythology, those of Western literature, and the effects of appropriation and misrepresentation on Native communities. I analyze the way the windigo are represented in Western literature and argue that Native American spirits should belong to the cultures they originate from.

Repatriation and Erasing the Past

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Weiss ◽  
James W. Springer
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
American Indian ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Human Remains ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Impact Research ◽  
Indian Law ◽  
Burial Grounds ◽  
The Way

Engaging a longstanding controversy important to archaeologists and indigenous communities, Repatriation and Erasing the Past takes a critical look at laws that mandate the return of human remains from museums and laboratories to ancestral burial grounds. Anthropologist Elizabeth Weiss and attorney James Springer offer scientific and legal perspectives on the way repatriation laws impact research. Weiss discusses how anthropologists draw conclusions about past peoples through their study of skeletons and mummies and argues that continued curation of human remains is important. Springer reviews American Indian law and how it helped to shape laws such as NAGPRA (the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act). He provides detailed analyses of cases including the Kennewick Man and the Havasupai genetics lawsuits. Together, Weiss and Springer critique repatriation laws and support the view that anthropologists should prioritize scientific research over other perspectives.

scholarly journals The Caddoan Oak Hill Village Site

1996 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Brett Cruse ◽  
Timothy K. Perttula
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
North America ◽  
Community Or ◽  
The Past ◽  
Strip Mine ◽  
Lignite Coal ◽  
Social Arrangements ◽  
Utilities Services ◽  
Near Future

Rarely do prehistoric archeologists in North America have the opportunity to completely excavate and study an entire Native American community or village. To be able to expose a Native American village in its entirety provides a unique, and unprecedented, view of the past community and social arrangements that existed among Native American societies before contact with Europeans. Recently, in northeast Texas, the Oak Hill Village site (41RK214), a large village occupied by prehistoric horticultural-agricultural Caddo peoples between about A.O. 1050 and 1450, was fully uncovered under the direction of J. Brett Cruse (then of Espey, Huston & Associates, Inc., Austin, Texas) for Texas Utilities Services. The company plans to strip mine the site area in the near future for lignite coal. With the cooperation of TU Services, the investigations at the Oak Hill Village were the most extensive ever completed at a Caddo Indian site.

Drawing, Redrawing, and Undrawing

2019 ◽  
pp. 147-162
Author(s):  
Benoît Crucifix
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Mechanical Reproduction ◽  
The Past ◽  
Small Press ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
The Way

Drawing comics holds an ambiguous status, between graphic trace and mechanical reproduction. This chapter examines practices of copying that play up this ambiguity, looking at comics, redrawn and undrawn, that foreground the questions: What does it mean to draw without drawing? What does it mean to copy and redraw or even to disengage from the very act of drawing? By reading through a selection of contemporary small-press comics from both Europe and North America that draw from archives, this chapter works toward elaborating a “graphic archiveology,” analyzing the way creators materially engage with the past, literally redrawing from loose, often self-curated archives of comics.

Urban History in North America

Urban History ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 6-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zane L. Miller ◽  
Clyde Griffen ◽  
Gilbert Stelter
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Urban History ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Present Subject ◽  
The Way

History is a tricky business, if only because history, as a phenomenon of the present, subject to scrutiny and manipulation, does not exist: it is, in a very real sense, made up. The study of the history of historical writing is a doubly tricky business because it is not merely what really happened in the past which determined the way people acted and wrote history, but also the way in which people perceived what happened. These complications require that one not only take into account what historians have said but also their perceptions of reality in their own times and the way that perception defined their conception of what was real in the past. Definition becomes the crux of the matter, for the way our predecessors wrote urban history depended upon their definition of their subject matter.

Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
James J. Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Collective Memories ◽  
The Past ◽  
Prevailing View ◽  
The Way

At a time when the Union between Scotland and England is once again under the spotlight, Remembering the Past in Nineteenth-Century Scotland examines the way in which Scotland’s national heroes were once remembered as champions of both Scottish and British patriotism. Whereas 19th-century Scotland is popularly depicted as a mire of sentimental Jacobitism and kow-towing unionism, this book shows how Scotland’s national heroes were once the embodiment of a consistent, expressive and robust view of Scottish nationality. Whether celebrating the legacy of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, the reformer John Knox, the Covenanters, 19th-century Scots rooted their national heroes in a Presbyterian and unionist view of Scotland’s past. Examined through the prism of commemoration, this book uncovers collective memories of Scotland’s past entirely opposed to 21st-century assumptions of medieval proto-nationalism and Calvinist misery. Detailed studies of 19th-century commemoration of Scotland’s national heroes Uncovers an all but forgotten interpretation of these ‘great Scots’ Shines a new light on the mindset of nineteenth-century Scottish national identity as being comfortably Scottish and British Overturns the prevailing view of Victorian Scottishness as parochial, sentimental tartanry

Profilometry. Using Corneo-scleral topography for scleral lens fitting

The Eye ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (128) ◽  
pp. 19-22
Author(s):  
Gregory DeNaeyer
Keyword(s):  
Ocular Surface ◽  
World Wide ◽  
Contact Lenses ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Way

The world-wide use of scleral contact lenses has dramatically increased over the past 10 year and has changed the way that we manage patients with corneal irregularity. Successfully fitting them can be challenging especially for eyes that have significant asymmetries of the cornea or sclera. The future of scleral lens fitting is utilizing corneo-scleral topography to accurately measure the anterior ocular surface and then using software to design lenses that identically match the scleral surface and evenly vault the cornea. This process allows the practitioner to efficiently fit a customized scleral lens that successfully provides the patient with comfortable wear and improved vision.

The Southern Slope of Monsalvat: How Spanish Wagnerism Became Catalan

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-47
Author(s):  
Clinton D. Young
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southern Slope ◽  
Modern Music ◽  
The Past ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Symphonic Culture ◽  
Similar Dynamic ◽  
The Way

This article examines the development of Wagnerism in late-nineteenth-century Spain, focusing on how it became an integral part of Catalan nationalism. The reception of Wagner's music and ideas in Spain was determined by the country's uneven economic development and the weakness of its musical and political institutions—the same weaknesses that were responsible for the rise of Catalan nationalism. Lack of a symphonic culture in Spain meant that audiences were not prepared to comprehend Wagner's complexity, but that same complexity made Wagner's ideas acceptable to Spanish reformers who saw in the composer an exemplar of the European ideas needed to fix Spanish problems. Thus, when Wagner's operas were first staged in Spain, the Teatro Real de Madrid stressed Wagner's continuity with operas of the past; however, critics and audiences engaged with the works as difficult forms of modern music. The rejection of Wagner in the Spanish capital cleared the way for his ideas to be adopted in Catalonia. A similar dynamic occurred as Spanish composers tried to meld Wagner into their attempts to build a nationalist school of opera composition. The failure of Tomás Bréton's Los amantes de Teruel and Garín cleared the way for Felip Pedrell's more successful theoretical fusion of Wagnerism and nationalism. While Pedrell's opera Els Pirineus was a failure, his explanation of how Wagner's ideals and nationalism could be fused in the treatise Por nuestra música cemented the link between Catalan culture and Wagnerism.

The End of History Museums: What's Plan B??

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 9-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Carson
Keyword(s):  
Historic Sites ◽  
The Public ◽  
End Of History ◽  
House Museums ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Museums ◽  
Plan B ◽  
The End Of History ◽  
The Way

Abstract Are historic sites and house museums destined to go the way of Oldsmobiles and floppy disks?? Visitation has trended downwards for thirty years. Theories abound, but no one really knows why. To launch a discussion of the problem in the pages of The Public Historian, Cary Carson cautions against the pessimistic view that the past is simply passéé. Instead he offers a ““Plan B”” that takes account of the new way that learners today organize information to make history meaningful.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document